1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to healthcare systems planning tools and, more specifically, to a tool for assessment and dynamic forecasting of resources across a health system.
2. Description of the Related Art
Large institutional organizations, such as healthcare organizations, expand their capacities from time to time in response to changes in demand for their services. For example, a healthcare organization might build a new hospital in an area when it determines that the population in the area has increased to the point where it could support a new hospital. Similarly, a hospital might remodel to redeploy services to services that have experienced an increase in demand. For example, a hospital might redeploy resources from a pediatric unit to a cardiovascular unit as the average age of the surrounding population increases.
However, prior to building a new facility or expanding an existing one, the organization must consider many different factors in deciding such issues as: the level and type of demand for services; where to build the facility; the capacity of the facility, the features offered by the facility, capacity of nearby competing facilities, and the like. Such organizations also consider such factors when considering expanding or redeploying resources at existing facilities.
In the example of building a new hospital, the healthcare organization must first consider the economic impact of a new hospital and the demand for various types of services that could be offered at the hospital. This must be considered in view of such factors as: population and other demographic information, trends in demand for healthcare services in the area, services offered by competing facilities in the area, and similar factors. The organization's planners must predict the types of healthcare needs that potential patients will most likely have (e.g., if the average age in the population is low, cardiac surgery might not immediately be a high priority) and the trends in how those needs will change (e.g., as the average age increases, the facility will experience an increased demand for cardiac surgery). Planners must also predict the effects of competing facilities changing their capacity (e.g., they must determine the impact of nearby hospitals increasing their cardiac surgery capabilities). Many other factors must also be considered in the planning process in order to make an optimal decision regarding the nature of a new facility.
Typically, this type of analysis in performed by compiling data, generating estimates and making predictions based on past experience. The results of this process are presented to the planners, who then make the decisions as to how to proceed. Spreadsheets are often used to assemble the data and such spreadsheets can allow for some manipulation of data to examine several different scenarios. However, such spreadsheets display only compilations of the raw data, usually in the form of tables. Considering alternative scenarios in a spreadsheet usually requires substituting data values in the spreadsheet and then recalculating the spreadsheet, which can be burdensome and prone to mistakes. Also, such tables do not provide an easily perceived visual result that lends itself to intuitive analysis.
Therefore, there is a need for an integrated suite of tools that allow planners to assemble, manipulate and visualize large amounts of data used in the facilities planning process.